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Vault 62
One of the Vault-Tec Societal Preservation Vaults created before the Great War, Vault 62 was a part of the company’s sinister program of experiments on their unwitting occupants. Despite this, the Vault managed to function as advertised, and served as a viable shelter for its population for decades. Eventually, the descendants of its occupants would become vital to the formation of the Atlanta Free Republic, even long after the Vault had ceased to function. History Vault 62 was built outside of Atlanta, Georgia, and advertised directly at the city’s people. Interest was high, and the Vault filled its quota of spots before its completion in December of 2075. Obstinately, the Vault was advertised as a safe haven from the horrors of total annihilation, a new home, underground for those lucky enough to have spaces inside of it. However, behind the scenes, it was intended to be a part of Vault-Tec program of experiments. Much of the experiment’s origins lay with Jimmy Jahm, an enterprising wunderkind student at Vault-Tec University (who also happened to be the son of the regional vice-president in charge of marketing). While there, Jahm had devised a number of different chemicals that he claimed could be used as additives to foods and drink that, while undetectable, could be used to produce behavioural changes. Tests on other university students (as well as on unwitting visitors during university open days) had yielded results that VTU’s staff saw as not only interesting but also potentially useful as a part of a future experiment. As such, Jahm was given an extensive grant to perform large-scale experiments on the population of a vault. As with the rest of the Vaults, the Vault 62 program went live with the advent of the Great War on October 23rd, 2077. Due to careful planning, the Vault was fully functional and ready to go on the morning of the conflict, with its entire planned population and staff arriving before the Vault was sealed. Under the orders of Overseer Celia Shore, Jahm was given authority to start his experiments a month after the Vault was sealed, giving the population time to adjust and settle in order to provide the most useful data. On November 23rd, 2077, Jahm introduced the first batch of chemicals into the population. Operating under strict instructions to only contaminate the populace and with food preparation making sure that the Vault Dweller and staff meals were separate, Jahm was confident that his first concoction would produce valuable results. Intended to induce hysteria in the subjects, Jahm confidently predicted that within a week the Vault would be a seething sea of mindless panic. Even allowing for potential casualties due to unexpected reactions, he expected that they would be able to continue the tests for years to come. Instead, after two weeks there was an utter lack of mass hysteria within the Vault. A few of the occupants had complained of their meals having a ‘funny taste’, but the reactions that he had expected were entirely absent. While discouraged, Jahm chalked this up to the experimental process and opted to move on to his second concoction. Intended to produce near mindless-rage in test subjects, the formula was again introduced into the food supply so that staff could monitor the results. Again, the outcome was disappointing with little to know actual result. Rather than rage, the formula did seem to induce sudden unexpected vomiting, which was far from the desired outcome. And while there was a lot of anger among the residents, it stemmed more from having bits of food splashed all over them by their compatriots than any actual effects of the chemicals. Again, Jahm admitted that it was an experimental process and that results were not guaranteed. Six months in and not one of his formulas had yielded any results at all, let alone those expected by the experimental staff. While the occupants had devoted plenty of time to complaining about the flavour of the food, none of them had experienced any behavioural changes from it. In fact, the only food-related incident came on April 14th, 2078, when Overseer Shaw died from an undiagnosed peanut allergy. Under the control of the new Overseer, Ivor Lott, Jahm was given an ultimatum. Either he would give Lott a result, or his experiment – and his place in the Vault – would be terminated. This put Jahm up against a wall, as he knew that his experiments had always been complete frauds. His early ‘successes’ at VTU had come from paying off his supposedly unwitting test subjects, using his mother’s money to ensure that he would have a safe spot in a Vault where he would not just be another guinea pig for somebody else’s experiment. Desperate to preserve his space in the Vault (and by extension, his life), Jahm worked feverishly in isolation to concoct something that would work. Convinced that he was on to something, but also not wanting to risk failure, he opted to test his newest concoction on himself. His plan was to take a massive single dose and record the result before presenting it to Lott for approval. Unlike his prior efforts, this formula yielded a result of sorts. Within seconds after ingesting it, Jahm suffered a heart attack induced by the formula and died. After discovering what had happened, Lott opted to terminate the experiment while also disposing of Jahm’s body and research notes. Having contained the truth of what had gone on behind the scenes, he opted to continue running the Vault as it was supposedly intended to be until he received an all-clear signal from Vault-Tec. Of course, no such signal ever came, with Vault 62 continuing to operate for years and decades after is experiment was aborted. Lott himself would die in office in 2103, with Leo Conroy succeeding him. By 2125, clear divisions were emerging within the Vault’s population. Now made up almost entirely of those born and raised within the Vault, many of its occupants were agitating for a return to the surface. However, Conroy knew that Vault-Tec had never made any provisions for such happening outside of the all-clear; as an experimental Vault, it was expected that the population would likely all be dead by now. At the same time, there were other pressures that served to force his hand, ones that he had no control over. Because it had been intended as an experimental Vault, 62 had been built with a relatively limited life expectancy. Many of the Vault’s systems had become worn and were suffering from breakdowns due to its massively outliving its expected life cycle while continuing to support a full population. The 2126 review concluded that Vault 62’s systems were failing, and that it would become uninhabitable by 2130. With careful use of resources and maintenance they could extend its life, but any such work would be merely prolonging the inevitable. Confronted with this problem, Conroy began work on preparing the Vault 62 population to return to the surface. The population of Vault Dwellers were put through intense training to help adapt them to a world that almost none of them had ever seen, and that had been radically reshaped by the Great War. While the Vault’s sensors indicated that the atmospheric radiation around the door was down to safe levels, its inhabitants still had little idea as to what would be out there. Given these circumstances, planning for the return to the surface became cautious and wary of possible hazards. Finally, on October 23rd, 2127, fifty years to the day after the Great War, the door of Vault 62 opened again. Its population left the Vault, stepping into what was a strange, alien new world. Initial exploration revealed that the area around the Vault was largely safe, but with some caveats; the explores found examples of deadly, mutated wildlife which proved to be universally aggressive and dangerous towards the Vault Dwellers. Knowing that they could not return to the Vault, the population instead chose to build a new home for themselves near their former one. Taking what they could from Vault 62, the Vault Dwellers began construction of a new settlement nearby that they felt would be as best a home as they could manage. With access to water (purified by Vault-Tec technology) and soil for crops, they felt that they had all that they needed to establish a new society. The Vault Dwellers chose to name their settlement Conroy, after the man who had led them to this new world. Growing using materials salvaged from the Vault, Conroy was, at first, relatively safe in its isolation. Its people had shelter and plentiful water, and the use of repurposed turrets and Mister Handy robots gave them a measure of protection from the outside world. While there were injuries and even deaths from wild animals and the other perils of living in the wastelands, for the most part, the people of Conroy were optimistic and even enthusiastic about their chances of reclaiming the outside world. Their biggest change came in early 2128 when a foraging party made contact with a group of local Tribals. The Vault Dwellers were surprised to find other people alive on the surface, but also somewhat dismayed to see the primitive state they had regressed into after only two generations. After some initial hesitation and more than a little tension, Leo Conroy chose to engage with these people, hoping to build an alliance with them. The Tribals proved to be somewhat receptive to his overtures, seeing opportunities to improve their own lives. However, not all contact was peaceful. In March 2128, the community came under attack by a band of raiders, who saw Conroy as a source of rich plunder. Faced with the combination of robots and turrets, they were driven off, but not before inflicting losses on the community. While they were shocked by this development, the people of Conroy chose to move forwards and strengthen their ties with their Tribal allies in order to better protect themselves. This led to a sharing of information, as the Vault Dwellers and Tribals exchanged knowledge, each seeking to aid the other. Over the next fifty years, the two groups would slowly merge through trade, alliances and intermarriage. Many chose to leave the community or marry into the Tribes, but those that stayed chose to honour their predecessors through keeping the Vault’s traditions alive. Vault Suits in particular became heirlooms, passed down through the generations as a part of their living history, a tangible link to the past. While the technology salvaged from the Vault would eventually break down or wear out, the people of Conroy did their best to maintain their knowledge and records. Exploring ruins to recover pre-war information became a vital part of their lives, with teams even venturing as far afield as the ruins of Atlanta in their expeditions. In many ways, the people of Conroy saw themselves as the guardians of pre-war knowledge, doing their best to keep the flame of civilisation burning. Their geographic isolation meant that Conroy remained relatively unaware of the rise of the Georgia Hills Confederacy and its expansionism. The stories that reached them were largely second-hand, and dismissed as a new round of fighting among the tribals in and around the Atlanta ruins. Consequently, few heard of the city’s conquest and the formation of the New Atlanta Republic, and even fewer recognised the threat it represented to their future. In 2198, forces from the New Atlanta Confederacy attacked Conroy, intent on capturing and enslaving its skilled, technologically capable populace. While they had not expected this particular threat, years of planning and prepared defences helped blunt the Confederate attack long enough for Overseer Gunter Rigg to rally his population. Realising that Conroy was lost and that his people would gain nothing by staying to stand and fight, he ordered the population to scatter and go to ground with their allies. Those captured by the Confederacy were put to work in building their new city, their technical skills highly prized by their new masters. Descended from survivalist groups and isolationist militias, the Confederacy had little in the way of technical skills of their own, which led to a dependence on their captives. While at first they were slaves, some would prove to be so valuable that they would rise to power within the new order. Conroy itself had fallen, but the Confederacy had captured only a portion of its population. The rest would remain at large, joining up with the various tribes that Conroy had been intertwined with for decades. They would do their best to share knowledge and retain their cultural identity within the tribes, even if they were no longer as centralised as they had been. Unfortunately, these practices also meant that they would be the targets for Confederacy slaver raids that were seeking to gain more of a technological advantage as they built their city-state. The arrival of Silas Haydon in the region in 2260 served as a rallying point for the last of the Vault 62 descendants. Now interspersed among the tribes while also becoming a vital part of them, they threw their support behind him as a way of ending their targeted persecution. In turn, their influence helped swing the tribes fully behind Haydon, ensuring that he would have his army. In order to cement the deal, Haydon married Caddy Clearwater, the daughter of a tribal chief and descendant of Leo Conroy. In many ways, the fall of the Confederacy and the rise of the Atlanta Free Republic would be the end of the distinct Vault 62 culture. The Vault Dweller descendants would become a key part of the new order, using their skills to build on and expand the Confederacy’s infrastructure. However, now they were living within a more urban, multicultural society with a far greater population that they represented only a tiny portion of. At the same time, those skills were being more broadly taught and shared in order to avoid concentrating them in one group. Description Vault 62 was a standard Vault-Tec vault, constructed as a part of its falsely-advertised Societal Preservation Program. The Vault itself was built to largely standard specifications with all the amenities it would need to function, such as advanced nuclear generations, water filtering and recycling systems, air purification, hydroponics and so on. The Vault was designed for a launch population of 500 and a maximum capacity of 1000; due to the nature of its experiment, achieving a comfortable, stable population would be key. Vault 62’s experiment was based around the idea of large-scale behavioural modification through food additives. The plan called for the additives to be trialled across the entire population of the vault with the results to be measured and recorded. Consequently, while the Vault required no specific modifications for the experiment itself, Vault-Tec took the opportunity to cut corners in its construction, figuring that its entire population would be dead one way or another within a generation. Many of its systems were built to under spec with the idea that they would last as long as the population did. Most importantly, Vault 62 was never intended to re-open; as such, it was not equipped with a GECK or even CAMPs. However, the Vault 62 experiment would never go fully live. Its chief scientist, James Jahm, was a fraud who had faked results in order to guarantee a position within a Vault. With the deaths of both him and its first overseer, Celia Shaw, the experiment was halted. Subsequent overseers tried to run the Vault as best as possible, and did their best to cover up the true nature of the vault. Consequentially, its true nature has remained unknown. After the return to the surface in 2127, the former Vault Dwellers chose to strip Vault 62 of everything that they could use in the construction of their new home. What wasn’t claimed by the population was left to decay, with the remaining systems succumbing over time. No effort was made to preserve it by its former inhabitants, who were more concerned with their survival than conservation. The Vault now stands empty with no remaining functional systems; no power, lights, water, air circulation or anything else. What is left is a dark cavern, filled with rusting machinery and failing infrastructure, considered to be too dangerous to even enter and avoided by most people. Parts of the structure itself have collapsed due to neglect, leading to several cave-ins that have sealed off or completely destroyed parts of the Vault. The door itself no longer functions, and has been left hanging open for over a century now. Category:Places Category:Vaults Category:Georgia